


like drinking fireworks

by TheSuperDandy



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSuperDandy/pseuds/TheSuperDandy
Summary: The morning after the kiss. The first day they met. The day they say I love you.





	like drinking fireworks

The world had changed and it wouldn’t change back. Everything inanimate had become animate. Breathing wasn’t just breathing now, it was a sacred act, an incantation, like drinking fireworks.

When he slid the key into the lock at five am the key slid through all of his senses. It felt unbearably significant. Unlocking _this_ building. This shop that had come from the magical mess that was David’s mind, that Patrick had turned into a physical reality. 

He worked for hours. Smooth glass, rough cardboard, sanded wood, every texture registered in his too-sensitive fingertips. He couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss.

He couldn’t think about anything else, but it was almost impossible to have a coherent thought. It was just – the kiss. Over and over. David kissing him. The way the kiss had already started while Patrick was talking, because David wasn’t really listening to him, David was already kissing him.

He hadn’t even tried to hide it. He had been so sure of Patrick and Patrick, who had never kissed a man, had felt undone, terrified, elated, being the object of that gaze.

And then the kiss.

He washed the windows. He took the stock off every shelf. He wiped the shelves. He lined every bottle up perfectly.

The look. The kiss. The coy, caressing way David had said his name.

He swept the floor. He arranged the fruit. He re-arranged it.

The hard edges of David’s rings against his neck, David’s warm fingers around his neck, his skull, making him lose track of himself. David, wearing silver rings.

He moved the old lip balms to the front. He lined up new lip balms at the back. He dusted the cash register.

The look. The kiss. His name. The way it had felt to say David’s name. Like a magic spell.

It had to be a magic spell. It had changed the world.

 

*

 

The first time he saw David the world had remained itself. An ordinary world with David Rose in it. God, David that day. Patrick had never met anyone like him. It wasn’t just that he was black and white in a technicolour world, or that he spoke like he’d been written by Jules Verne but read by a Cali girl. Patrick _liked_ him. 

David Rose was a performance, that much was immediately obvious, and Patrick was entertained. More than he would ever have expected to be. He liked David’s expressive face. He liked it even more when he realised just how many things David’s face expressed all at once.

He _loved_ it when his baseball references produced a mixture of disgust, condescension and confusion.

He had given David his business card with more than professional courtesy. Ten minutes after David left he already wanted to talk to him again. An hour later he started to doubt himself. He must be misremembering the extent to which David Rose was unique and uniquely interesting.

The second he heard David’s voice say, _Hi David, it’s Patrick_ , he knew he could never have invented someone so perfectly odd. He listened to all the voicemails and then listened to them again. And then he played them aloud to Ray, because he suddenly thought it might be weird that he was listening to them so many times and also they were ludicrously funny.

And…brilliant.

He started to realise that David didn’t just express multiple things at once, he _was_ multiple things at once.

When David slunk sheepishly back into his office, Patrick pushed every button he could think of, and David responded every single time. It was _addictive_ making David Rose express five things in under a second. Reaching his hand into the constant stream of David’s consciousness and disrupting the flow.

Patrick was all sincerity when he told David the business was a good idea, though. Credit where credit was due. He honestly hadn’t said it for a reaction.

But the reaction he got was…it was somehow the opposite of entertaining or funny. That smile. David looked down, too shy to let Patrick see how pleased he felt, which was ridiculous because David couldn’t hide _anything_.

That private, exposed, genuine feeling appeared for only a fleeting second and Patrick wanted to make him do it again immediately. Again. And more.

He couldn’t stop thinking about that smile, and not just because it was endlessly fascinating to him. Among the things he’d realised in that moment was this: David was beautiful.

Beautiful.

His expressions were part of it. The way, even when they’d first met, his eyes had invited Patrick to look again. But the face that made those expressions was beautiful.

Beautiful.

Lying on his bed in the small room he rented from Ray, Patrick couldn’t get past that one difficult word. It wasn’t a word for a man. And it was too accurate, too true for him to pretend he thought David was anything else.

He was beautiful, his dark brows and eyes and hair, his long mouth that could express anything.

His mouth.

His _mouth_.

Patrick crossed his arms over his eyes, fists clenched, and breathed. Just breathed.

 

*

 

An hour after Patrick told David he loved him, David walked into the shop and kissed him without hesitation. It was a kiss that warned Patrick he was about to be undone, though he didn’t have any time to prepare or defend against it.

He looked up at David and couldn’t have smiled.

It was the first time he had seen David’s face express just one feeling in unison, without a single wall or deflection or defence to make the impact less. And it was directed right at him. A world-changing kiss couldn’t have prepared Patrick for that. Nothing could have.

“I love you,” David said.

Only one of him in all the world and he had just put himself entirely in Patrick’s care. Reckless. Brave. Perfect.

His.


End file.
